Mixing problems

[Casey Alien]

Hey guys, so I guess you could call me a beginner at this so I need something answered to the best of someone's ability though everyone I talk to seems to be slightly confused when I ask them. My daw is run off of a toshiba. It seems that the volume and sound quality with it is terrible. For instance when I play a beat out of my toshiba through my monitors you can't even hear the 808s almost but then when I play the same beat from YouTube from my iPhone through my monitors it sounds as clean and loud as ever. Same with me using expensive studio head phones. I'll make a beat from the laptop try mixing it send it through to my phone and when it gets to my phone for me to listen to it's like twice as loud as it was on my laptop so you can really hear how bad it was mixed. So my question is, how am I supposed to know what my mix sounds like if my laptop is that quiet? Suggestions because it's really hindering my improvement I feel like.

[bandcoach]

which model toshiba?

a link to the actual specs would be helpful

[Casey Alien]

Apparently I can't post links yet but it's a toshiba c855d and from what I remember it was only like 200 dollars so I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a god awful laptop for this kind of thing

[DarkRed]

Apparently I can't post links yet but it's a toshiba c855d and from what I remember it was only like 200 dollars so I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a god awful laptop for this kind of thing

Do yourself a favor, give away that Toshiba to a kid.

If you take this seriously, you need to put in some amount of seriousness into it. Monitoring is and will always be absolutely critical for a great production sound. You have to get good voltages in and out and you need to get the transients hitting your ears the way they will hit the ears of the listeners.

The time we spend on answering the question the way we do, is in USD more worth than the price of the Toshiba. So in case you are frustrated about our responses, please just accept this as the most optimal response you could ever get on this at this point in your career. You need to hear this and not other confusing stuff around you.

[Casey Alien]

Do yourself a favor, give away that Toshiba to a kid.

If you take this seriously, you need to put in some amount of seriousness into it. Monitoring is and will always be absolutely critical for a great production sound. You have to get good voltages in and out and you need to get the transients hitting your ears the way they will hit the ears of the listeners.

Yeah I need to get something better which I plan on doing this month since the only thing I've done for the past six months was sit in my room and make beats. Any suggestion on what kind of laptop is best? I'd spend anywhere up to a grand

[steffeeh]

It must be some kind of audio codec that your computer is running. If you want to make music on your computer, make sure you disable any audio codec or thirdparty audio driver, and only run window's default audio driver.

Right click on the speaker icon on the Windows toolbar, and choose Playback Devices (or whatever it's called in the english version of Windows), then mark the device you use and click Properties, then you should see on the tab that pops up the name of the audio driver and what company is behind it, and if it's Window's default it should say "High Definition Audio Device", made by Microsoft.
What does it say?

[DarkRed]

Yeah I need to get something better which I plan on doing this month since the only thing I've done for the past six months was sit in my room and make beats. Any suggestion on what kind of laptop is best? I'd spend anywhere up to a grand

If you are using a laptop, you need to be aware of the issues coming with running stuff on a Firewire 400 connection or slower in terms of link speed - it gives you latency. And not only that, but without great CPU and disk speeds you are also going to suffer with latency, you need at least 4 CPU cores.

I recommend Apple and Dell.

[Casey Alien]

It must be some kind of audio codec that your computer is running. If you want to make music on your computer, make sure you disable any audio codec or thirdparty audio driver, and only run window's default audio driver.

Right click on the speaker icon on the Windows toolbar, and choose Playback Devices (or whatever it's called in the english version of Windows), then mark the device you use and click Properties, then you should see on the tab that pops up the name of the audio driver and what company is behind it, and if it's Window's default it should say "High Definition Audio Device", made by Microsoft.
What does it say?

It says Realtek high definition audio. I also have an option for an "amd high definition audio" but it says it's not plugged in

[steffeeh]

It says Realtek high definition audio. I also have an option for an "amd high definition audio" but it says it's not plugged in

That's a thirdparty audio driver, and could pretty much be why you're having this issue. If I were you I would go back to that small tab and click "Properties" next to where you read the audio driver name, then go to the "Driver"-tab, and choose "Uninstall", and it should then be set to the default Windows audio driver. See if the audio changes
Before you do this, make sure you check what version of Realtek audio driver you're running, so you know what version to google and download in case you get some error.

However, the issue could actually instead be that it is your phone that has a colored sound, with perhaps a bass boost and a much louder signal, meaning your computer signal actually sounds good, but you're comparing it with something that has been altered (the audio on your phone). That's just a thought that occured to me now.

If you want a powerful new computer, take my advice and buy a desktop, not a laptop. I've done this mistake myself, spending a lot of cash on a powerful laptop, and I will never again buy a "powerful" laptop. The next computer I buy will be a homebuilt power-pc.
The reason why is simply because all parts inside a laptop are watered down versions so they won't consume too much energy -> you get a longer battery life, which is the thing that sells today. I even dare to say that if you take 2 copies of a computer component (the same model), for instance a processor, of which one is built for a laptop, and one for a desktop, the laptop version won't perform as well.
Another problem with components in laptops is that they can pretty much never reach maximum performance as they'll simply get too hot and need to initiate a mode where they don't perform as good for a little while to prevent damage on the hardware. This is known as Thermal Throttling, and is especially common in more powerful laptops. So you may have a good laptop and the audio in your DAW may run just fine, but 10 minutes later you start getting underruns even though you haven't done anything special.

[bandcoach]

actually the realtek high def audio is the on-board cards audio drivers - designed for the realtek chipset found on most motherboards - however, it is probably better for Windows to install the generic drivers than run the realtek ones (based on experience)

I would second what darkred said about dell - my last three machines have been dell desktops all are maxed out (or near to) on ram and use better quality WD drives of 1TB and 2TB. they were in sequence a gx260 with 4gb of ram, a gx620 with 4 gb of ram and t5400 with 16gb of ram (No way I can afford the 128gb of ram this baby can handle - that would be 8 x 16gb sticks of ram). the first two still run and have xp pro sp3 + all updates applied. the last one is running windows 7 pro sp1 and all current updates applied